The boy searched his memory for a melody. A girl wearing a strange necklace had taught it to him yesterday. The necklace was strung with seven glass beads spaced out along its length in no clear pattern as far as he could see. She had told him that she had made it herself one day.

Standing in front of the window, she had smiled curiously as the sun reflected the light from the beads onto her skin. Seven dots played upon the skin of her arms. I’ve never seen it do that, she had said.

Then she had played a song for him on the piano. It was a simple song, and she had played with one hand. It seemed to be a song of the moment. The notes, as soon as they were played, seemed to become absorbed into time.

He had listened intently to each note and the silences in between. Through these spaces he had sensed something true about his life and his thoughts. But it was not something he would admit to anyone, not even to himself.

She had told him that she had never thought about what she might do today. She had never thought about her necklace either, until the moment she had made it. And of course, she had not made it in hopes that one day she might admire the way the sun shone on it. But it made her happy all the same.

The boy remembered the long days he had spent in front of his piano, searching for a perfect world. He thought about his thoughts. He recalled the melodies that had possessed him. He had always been searching for something, his playing always felt insufficient. He wanted deeper sensations aroused within him, longer in their influence.

He had always thought about his future with hope. It made him happy to think that he may be growing closer and closer to the day that he would feel it truly, completely. He had never questioned why he would want this.

He searched again in his mind for the girl’s melody. The only music in his head now was a ten-minute piece he had been struggling with for the last few days. He recalled it in its entirety. He had committed himself to playing it perfectly so that he could make his teacher proud. It would show his ambition, his hopes and his dreams.

He had never asked for the girl’s name. He liked to think that it had all been in his imagination — that way he could be sure that she had been a part of him.

In the next instant, he sensed it. He knew it was the one, but it had not come from his memory. The notes were completely different. But the silence between each note revealed the same truth to him. It was like yesterday all over again, but without the girl and the necklace.

It seemed as if the notes were ringing out to him from different moments in his past and future. And then he knew that it was a song of the moment. It was the perfect expression of himself.

He would see his teacher today. He knew he could not play the ten-minute piece beautifully. But now he did not know why he had ever wanted to.

Somewhere, there lives a boy who has never seen his own face.

With his right eye, he loves to see the greatest and the smallest things, in so many different ways, with so much obsession, for such a long time. He likes to see things as they are and as they aren’t.

With his left eye, he loves to dream. He dreams of various timelines. He dreams of different dimensions, and spaces he cannot reach. He dreams of himself. Inside himself, outside himself. He dreams of women, men, girls, boys.

His right eye sees something beautiful. It does not speak.

He thinks about its history. He gives it a name. After all, nothing is beautiful in quite the same way.

It knows its structure well. It probably does not know other structures all that well. Why not give the others names too?

His left eye travels far away, to a place in the sky. Somewhere, there must be someone who can see the faces of these beautiful things. Each beautiful face, here to stay only once in this world.

His left eye travels higher and higher. His left eyebrow rises higher and higher, over the years.

What happens if you keep dreaming and dreaming?

One day, he meets a girl. The girl feels keenly the way shapes change around her. She feels the change in the boy’s strange face.

She can see his dreams in his face, his eyes, his eyebrows. There is always plenty of room in a face for dreams. She thinks that he dreams like something beautiful.

She thinks, what if you had lived without dreaming? What if you had seen your own face? Would your face be beautiful in quite the same way?

The rain in summer plays an unusual song.

A melody of white on white, hiding. It beats against the windows in a pattern I once saw on a necklace of black beads. I pictured it on a tree and the clouds.

Sometimes, I think I am closer to the world where the rain enters every building through windows without panes.

It is singing the most beautiful song I have heard. The song enters my body and spreads over time.